The frights of Halloween may be behind us for another year, but the one of the joys of surviving the disturbing images of a good horror film is the pleasure that comes from inflicting that experience on others -- which is definitely my intention. If you're considering starting a brood of mini-filmmakers you may want to skip this one, but if not, David Altobelli and Jeff Desom have given you the perfect excuse for your aversion to hungry knee high humans in their promo for HEALTH track Tears:
Mature/disturbing content warning!!!
Taken from the score the composed for Rockstar Games third iteration of the popular shooter Max Payne, Altobelli and Desom were given free conceptual reign as long as the final result conformed to the desired tone set out by the band. As opposed to perhaps some of the more obvious 'kids acting messed up' promos which spring to mind -- Chris Cunningham's Come to Daddy or Daniel Levi's Freak -- the pair instead drew inspiration from a zombie baby comparison chart and Johannes Nyholm's restaurant trashing baby short Las Palmas.
Given the cast's tender age, there were obvious limits on the amount disfiguring make up or prosthetics that could be used, so CGI was employed to augment the horror:
In “Tears”, the use of CGI was the only way of circumventing certain restrictions that we were facing when working with babies. For example, we were very careful with how much make-up the babies and their parents were comfortable with. VFX was then used to add details like milky eyes, veins, blood stains, the occasional missing jaw.
The resulting film, which could have easily been a throwaway gag, instead paints an unsettling picture of a world so beyond redemption that even its most innocent members are to be feared. How well do you think the mix of make up and CGI elements work in transforming the young cast into the toddling dead?
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